This may seem like a silly question at first, but have you ever paid to eat out at a restaurant?
Chances are, you could easily make a trip to the grocery store and spend less on getting the necessary ingredients to make the exact same meal.
You might even have a little left over…
That’s no secret, yet we are still willing to pay that little extra.
While the chef is in the kitchen doing what he does best, we’re able to focus more on what’s most important to us: friends, family, and maintaining those relationships.
Unfortunately, a lot of business owners—mostly online—don’t feel the same way about paid advertising.
But here’s the thing:
If you’re only using free methods to market your business, how much time are they costing you?
Social media is probably the best example.
Sure, you can tweet until you’re tapped out… Facebook ‘til your fingers fall off… Write articles until the letters fade off your keys…
…but all of these things (very quickly) add up to hours upon hours worth of time that could have been spent actually growing your business.
And that’s where “free” starts to rack up a pretty heft cost…
Time is precious. And, unlike money, it cannot be replenished.
But what are the advantages of paid advertising?
Here are a few things to consider:
Almost zero waiting for results
One great advantage of paid advertising, is that you can instantly generate a steady stream of highly-targeted traffic.
If you’re setting up a new marketing campaign and only bothering with free methods, it could be weeks until you have any significant data. If that campaign is a dud, you’ll have wasted precious time when you could have already rolled out the next campaign!
Targeted Response
Instead of throwing all your tweets against the wall to see what sticks, paid advertising allows you to hone in on a specific segment of your market.
Not only are you able to reach your goals quicker, the results are far likely to be better quality than blindly search for leads.
Stability
Certain search engines (*ahem*) change their algorithms like you and I change socks.
Which means if you’re relying on another form of free marketing—organic traffic from SEO—then you’re putting your business in the hands of someone else.
True, the same could be said for paid advertising. But in that case, you have control of the campaigns.
If the search engine companies feel it’s necessary to make changes, ones which will end up affecting you, your entire business could be gone overnight.
Harsh, but it happens all the time.
Measurability
Ok, fine…
Some forms of free advertising allow you to tack certain aspects of your marketing activities. I’ll give you that.
But how many allow you to really dig into the data and get your hands dirty?
Effective advertising is a game of changes.
In other words, you need to have a reliable way to track your current results, know what’s not working and tweak it until it does.
Anything less and you’re simply leaving money on the table.
Main Takeaway: Free is great, but it’s not always most effective. Figure out what your time is worth. If the task you’re doing costs more in time than the profit it gives in return, invest in getting it done quicker and more efficiently by someone else.
—————————————————————————————-
About the Author: Abe Cherian is an Internet Entrepreneur since 1999. As the founder of AdClickMedia.com, a pay-per-click advertising network, and the CEO of Multiple Stream Media, an online Advertising and Marketing firm, Abe and his team has helped tens of thousands of online advertisers reach ‘the right market’ at ‘the right time’, with the ‘right message’. To start advertising and driving traffic click here to open your free account: http://www.rent-a-list.com
—————————————————————————————-
WANT TO SHARE OR REPRINT THIS ARTICLE? Feel free. Just give us the fill attribution by leaving the entire article unedited including the Author resource box. Want to publish it on your blog? Copy and paste the properly formatted article from the text box below to your blog.
Article Permitted To Reprint As Is:
Have any resources of your own that have inspired you in your business? Leave us a comment below now to share them!
